Hear: Practice Listening to God [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Obedience is not this picture of God giving random laws that by drudgery we try to rise up and keep legalistically.

No. Instead, the gospel is good news and good news moves us. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britten, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series we've called Saver, as presented at Rinaldo Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now, an audio album called Saver. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries, either a CD album or a digital download of these audio messages.

So as you listen into today's messages, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org or call 877-544-4860.

877-544-4860. More on all of this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. Let me just give you some guidelines that have been helpful to me and recognizing God's voice. Number one, you can count on this. God's voice is always going to be consistent with the Bible. He's never going to speak in contradiction to His own word. God never, God isn't, that has no confusion within Himself, so He's going to be consistent. And God's voice is going to be consistent with God's character. You come to know God. Well, I don't know everything about God. I know of the vastness of who God is.

I just know a little bit, but I know the essence of His character is that God is love. I can know that if a voice is not a voice of love, it's not God's voice. There is a character that God has, and His voice will have that character. And I can count on this that God that God's voice always produces good fruit.

So if a voice is doing something in you and producing something within you, it's not good fruit. If it's not peace, if it's not joy, if it's not love, then you can be sure that's not God's voice. Here, more specifically, some nevers about the voice of God. God's voice will never make you feel hopeless. Sometimes I talk to people and they feel like, oh, God is on them and about something in there, but what it led them towards was feeling like giving up.

I'm like, that's not God. God doesn't, He's not a broker of despair. He is the God of hope.

Despair is the currency of hell. He'll never, His voice will never push you away from God Himself. God's interested in drawing people into Him, right? He sent Jesus that Jesus said, if He be lifted up, He draw people unto Himself.

He came and gave the ultimate gift in order to draw people to Himself. So His voice isn't going to push you away. His voice will never lead you into error.

His voice doesn't just have no error in it. He's not going to lead you towards error. He's leading you in the truth.

And as I've already said, it's not going to lead you to the truth. And as I've already said, His voice will never contradict His own written word. Here's something else important about God's voice. It'll never arouse anxiety.

Now, clarification here. There is a sense in which encountering God is awesome. And you can have a experience of awe that could make something inside of you stand at attention and maybe even be overwhelmed.

But it's not anxiety. God said in His word hundreds of times, fear not for I'm with you. So He's not going to speak to you in a way that's going to do the very thing that is against His own word. He's never going to tempt you towards evil. James says, let no one when he's tempted say, God has tempted me. God's voice, let me just say this. He's not going to lead you to do something that is contrary to His word. Sometimes I've talked to people and they think God has told them to do such and such. And I'm like, and it's actually just something that's against God's will.

I'm like, no, we don't even have to talk about that, brother. God's love will never withhold love to move you. He gives love. He doesn't dangle love like a carrot in front of you in order to try to motivate you.

That's what shame does. God's voice will never leave you in the dark, meaning confused. I'm not saying that God will tell you everything you want to know.

There've been plenty of times where I've wanted to know some things. God didn't let me in on it for whatever reasons, but He doesn't, He's not, the scripture says He's not the author of confusion. He'll not produce bad spiritual fruit and He'll never make you love God less. That would be contrary to His own nature.

So that's another way to put it. So always about the voice of God, that's sort of aligned with that God's voice will always confirm His written word, always bring you hope. Even if the communication from God seems painful to you because maybe there's some correction in it or something, but it's going to bring so much hope with it. His voice will draw you near to God, will lead you into peace. His voice will lead you to a deeper love for God. His voice will give you courage. That's one of the things I found about His voice, He'll give you courage. You know what encouragement is?

It's putting courage into. He is an encourager and you want to hear His voice because you will be encouraged, gain courage to do what might otherwise be really scary to you or difficult for you. And He will correct your sin always without cursing, condemning, or shaming. That's not the way the conviction of the Holy Spirit works.

He'll always bless you so you can bless others. And as I've said, His voice produces good fruit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Every single Christian can recognize the voice of God. It is part of what it means to be a child of God. Do you know that just in natural world and little children that they, babies, can recognize their mother's voice while still in utero? A joint research project by Canadian and Chinese scholars, different continents, same study, revealed the same thing. Unborn children not only learn their mother's voices but prefer the sound of their mother's voice.

Isn't that something? The mothers were tape recorded as they read a poem out loud and half of the unborn children heard the recording of their own mother while the other half heard a recording of some other woman's voice. And when the unborn babies heard the poem read by their own mothers, their heart rates went up with expectancy.

And when the baby heard the poem read by an unfamiliar woman's voice, a stranger, their heart rate decelerated. They know for sure that not only do unborn babies recognize their mother's voice, they like their mother's voice. And then when they're born, they therefore already know their mother's voice. Another study, day-old infants, this is great, they were given pacifiers that were connected to tape recorders. And depending on the baby's sucking response patterns, the pacifier either turned on the tape of their mother's voice or it turned on the tape of an unfamiliar woman's voice.

Listen to this. Within 10 to 20 minutes, one-day-old babies learn to adjust their sucking rate in order to turn their own mother's voice on. If I suck a little faster, my mommy's voice is going to come. And I would say, this makes me think that if God so designed us, that before we're even born, before we're even born, our ears are still surrounded by amniotic fluid, and we can recognize our mother's voice. And at one day, the only thing we know how to do is suckle something, and we can change the pattern of that just to hear our mother's voice. How much more so when you're born again, born from above, born of the Holy Spirit, are you given the privilege and the inheritance even as a newborn babe, a one-day-old Christian can hear his or her father's voice. And God meets you where you are. It's so wonderful about this. If you're one-day-old, He'll meet you with one-day-old language.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. With so much worry about yesterday's failures and so much hurry getting ready for tomorrow's tasks, sometimes it's hard to focus on the moment that matters most, right now. In a hurried, worried season, God invites you into the present.

Modern-day life coaches call it mindfulness, but it isn't a new psychological program, and it isn't rooted in Eastern religion. Mindfulness, living in the present, is God's idea, and the Bible unveils the way. Pastor Alan Wright invites you to savor life each day. When you make your gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's eight messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Make your gift today and learn how to savor the textures and flavors of God's grace each moment, in the moment, every day of your life. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product.

When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860.

Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. I was coming home from work when my son was three and a half years old, so many years ago, and I'd had a busy, busy day, lots of things going on. A funeral that day, picked up the phone to call my wife and say, I'm on my way home. And for the first time ever, the three and a half year old Bennett answered the phone. First time he'd ever answered the phone.

And I know what my wife, she saw the caller ID. She handed the phone to Bennett. He answered the phone and said, hello. And I heard this little voice on the side.

Oh, this is exciting. First time ever I've had a phone call conversation with my little boy, and he answered the phone. And I said, Bennett, it's Daddy. I said, I'm on my way home, and I'm wondering, what is going to be the first thing that he is going to say to me in our first ever time that he answered the phone? And is he going to say, Daddy, come home. Daddy, I can't wait to play with you. Daddy, come and tell me something exciting about his day. And I just waited to hear, what is he going to say?

And this was the first words he ever had on the phone with me. He said, why is a hornet another name for a bee? That's it.

That was it. And so that's what we talked about in our first conversation on the phone, is hornets are kind of like bees, but not exactly the same thing. And talk to them on a three-year-old level.

Right? And now I talk to him on the phone. We talk about different things.

In fact, now he'll call me from law school and try to get down to my level. One day, old Christian can recognize the voice of Father God. Christian has been walking with him for 80 years. Eighty years can learn nuances of the voice of God. Shema yo Israel, hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might.

These are the words I'm commanding to you, hear. So interesting in Hebrew, the word Shema means hear. Shema means to hear or to listen to, but it also means Shema means to obey. Hebrew doesn't have many words. In fact, there are only like 8,000 different Hebrew words in the Old Testament, whereas like English will have a hundred thousand or so. And I think part of this is that God doesn't need that many words.

Let there be light. But it also is that if a word is very important, then it can carry a lot of freight. And a Hebrew word has to carry a lot of freight because there's not a lot of them. So one word, almost all the time when you see the word translated obey, it's actually Shema. Or if you hear the word hear, it's actually Shema. And so you got to know whether to translate hear or obey.

But in the Hebrew mindset and God's mindset, there's really very little distinction because to hear, to listen to is in a real sense to obey. I remember when Bennett was little at one of our houses that we lived in early on, we had a brick retaining wall that was right next to the driveway. It was about four feet high. And obviously I didn't want a little boy walking on that, but every little boy, if there's a ledge, they want to walk on it. And I told him repeatedly, I said, don't walk on this ledge. I would never want you to fall and get hurt here.

So you can walk on the other side in the yard, but don't walk on this ledge. One day I was out in the yard and all of a sudden I heard screaming and crying. And I go to run and he's dangled halfway over that thing and blood just flowing down his leg. And the poor little kid is just in terrible pain and agony. Thankfully, he had not fallen all the way down and hit his head on the driveway.

He had just fallen, caught himself, scraped half his leg down the brick wall. And he's just crying. And I said, Oh, sweetie. I said, what happened? And he said, I didn't listen. I didn't listen to you.

Well, that's what it means. He didn't say, I didn't obey you. He said, I didn't listen because to listen is to obey. The way that God leads us into obedience, Deuteronomy 6, is hear, O Israel.

If I could get you to hear me, then I'll get you to obey me because these two things are so closely aligned. See, what happens is that when the good news of the gospel comes into you and you hear it, it elicits its own response. God's word is truth. And the children of God have the Spirit of God, which resonates with the truth of God. Our spirit bears witness with the Holy Spirit that we're children of God. God wants us to hear Him in such a way that when we hear, we just joyously respond to it. So obedience is not this picture of God giving random laws that by drudgery we try to rise up and keep legalistically.

No, instead, the gospel is good news and good news moves us. We had a big party on Friday night. It was the first time we really did this. All the staff, all their families, everybody came and children, all of the children, we had like 90 different adults here and about 50 kids.

They had a little circus for the kids. It was just a, we appreciate you. People in the congregation, some of you, you gave gift cards that we would just give out.

We're just raffling off all these, just giving them, just spontaneously giving people things. We just were silly. We laughed.

I got up with a band and sang Sweet Home Alabama. It was just, you know, it was just one of those nights, and we just had fun. But my wife was in heaven because her love lane was just giving gifts. She just wants to give. And so she was the designated gift.

I think we gave 45 gift cards away and they were good. They were like, you know, $30 Panera Bread and $50 to Olive Garden and go on a date, you know, and just, it was just all this just, and we just, everybody had a little ticket and she called out, 0194726. And somebody would go, ah! You know, come on up here and get this, a gift card to Outback Steakhouse, you know.

And people got, I mean, it'd be like unbelievable, one after the other. How silly it is to think that when Anne would call out the number 0142563, if somebody would sit there and go, I'm not going up there. Nobody's going to tell me what to do. No, if you heard your number called out, you jumped up and went up there and got your Barnes and Noble gift card.

You just did it. The hearing is the obeying because what you hear from God is always good news. Even when it doesn't sound good news to you, it's like, thou shalt not covet. No, if you hear him, what he's saying is you don't have to spend your days in misery, miserably looking at what other people have that you don't have. He says, thou shall not covet.

What he's saying is you get to live with joy and freedom and contentment. Okay, Lord, yes. You called my number.

Here I come running. You can hear God's voice. Well, that video we did of tests to see whether sheep will follow the voice of a stranger, when I was out there with a real life shepherd, young David Nicholson, we ran into a snag.

I have to be honest with you. We ran into a snag at first. I called the sheep. They didn't come. They didn't even pick up their heads from grazing. Then David called out to the sheep and they picked up their heads and they did not come. And I just turned and I said, son, you're ruining my illustration here. He tried again and they did not, they pick up their head.

They did not come. I said, David, I said, what is the problem? I said, sheep are supposed to know the voice of their shepherd and follow the shepherd. And I said, what is the problem? He said, well, it might be you, Pastor Alan. He said, I think they're afraid of you. And we had this camera crew and me standing there next to young shepherd David. They would not come.

I said, okay. So we moved far away. And he said, come sheep. And they came running. Because they know they're so vulnerable that they can't risk, they can't protect themselves.

They can't do anything for themselves. They just got to count on their shepherd. They're just not going to come around a stranger's voice. But when it was just their shepherd and they can see him, they come running. You're the sheep of God's pasture. And you can hear his voice by the Holy Spirit. And when you hear it, just come running.

Come running. That's the gospel. Alan Wright. In today's teaching, practice listening to God. Saver is the teaching that we're in, the broad series, and Alan is back with us in the studio sharing his part in Good News Thought for the day here in just a moment. With so much worry about yesterday's failures and so much hurry getting ready for tomorrow's tasks, sometimes it's hard to focus on the moment that matters most right now in a hurried, worried season. God invites you into the present.

Modern day life coaches call it mindfulness, but it isn't a new psychological program and it isn't rooted in Eastern religion. Mindfulness living in the present is God's idea and the Bible unveils the way Pastor Alan Wright invites you to savor life each day. When you make your gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's eight messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Make your gift today and learn how to savor the textures and flavors of God's grace each moment in the moment every day of your life. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries.

This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860.

Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Alan, there's a lyric to a song that says, God still speaks. He still speaks. I know his voice. And I think the emphasis there on knowing that. And we've talked about that. It's a good teaching.

Good thought for the day. You know, I find people in different walks of life that can be attuned to hear things I wouldn't hear. I mentioned earlier in the broadcast about a pilot friend who will be flying along in his little private plane and I've got headphones on and I hear the chatter on the radio and I'm just talking to my friend and all of a sudden he'll raise his hand.

I realize he just heard that his call letters were spoken to him by air traffic control and I didn't hear it at all. Well, he's trained for that. Well, I think that's what we become as Christians. We become ones who, ah, yeah, that's the way God speaks. Paul is God speaking right now. And so we can be trained for that.

But let's just remember this. Every single Christian is a sheep in the fold and his sheep can hear his voice. So listen, God's speaking. If you only caught part of today's teaching, not only can you listen again online, but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free. Find out more about these and other resources at pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.